Coalition to open up BBC accounts

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is forging ahead with plans to grant the National Audit Office (NAO) full access to the BBC's accounts.

Published today, a 36-page legislative program from the joint government features measures for enabling the NAO to more closely analyse how the corporation spends its £3.6bn licence fee.

The proposal's inclusion is perhaps unsurprising as it was featured in both the Tory and Lib Dem pre-election manifestos.

However, the legislative program contained no indication of what is planned for the BBC Trust, despite both parties pledging to scrap the organization prior to the election.

The section pertaining to the newly-formed Department of Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport did include measures for liberalising local media ownership rules so that companies can own multiple TV, radio and media outlets in one area.

The program further featured a commitment for rolling out superfast broadband, which could "if necessary" involve using some of the licence fee surplus from the digital switchover help scheme.

However, the previous government's ITV regional news replacement scheme was not included in the document, which would suggest that the planned independently-funded news consortium pilots in Scotland, Wales and England are now canceled indefinitely.

The Tories were strongly opposed to the IFNC scheme, but it was thought that the Lib Dems were in favor of the approach for bolstering the beleaguered ITV regional news service.

Despite pledging to foster more "transparency" in the BBC's accounting processes, the government also said that it will "maintain" the corporation's independence.

The coalition also promised to clamp down on advertising rules, particularly in terms of promotions aimed at children.